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When my partner and I started GlitterGuts, she thought it was stupid. I agreed that it was stupid, but not too stupid. It’s a simple premise: people like photos, love free shit, and could use a couple extra activities in between dancing and drinking. But it’s silly, and I never thought it would be a thing. My highest aspirations were to go on tour with some cool musicians, and while we’ve done weekend warrior tours with amazing artists and DJs like Midnight Conspiracy, Team Bayside High, Zebo, Dani Deahl, and (2013 Red Bull Thre3style US winner) DJ Trentino, things worked out differently. We started doing the unthinkable…. grownup shit, weddings and trade shows, things we never thought would appreciate us and accept us.

But it is a thing, so much so that, when we shot the Ulta trade show a couple weeks ago, there were no less than six photo booths on site. Some were traditional booths, some had green screens, some had props, and some had people as props. Our booth with CK One had sexy men with washboard abs who were able to take several hundred photos with perfect smiles and never blink when the light flashed. Dermablend had their amazing tattooed spokesmodel, Rick Genest (aka Rico the Zombie), who’s whole aesthetic was looking cool and bored and petulant, and then being laid back and down to Earth and shaking people’s hands between takes.

The photo booth thing and live photo booth thing might be a bubble, it might slow down and it might die off completely, but I’m not to worried about it. We started GlitterGuts at house parties and nightclubs in the middle of a DJ bubble, where bars that never needed more than a jukebox were hiring DJs just because everyone was hiring DJs. That wave has crested a little bit, and you can’t see DJs from Ghostly and IHEARTCOMIX and Fool’s Gold and Ed Banger at low-capacity venues every week, but EDM surpassing rap as the biggest music in the world, and DJs aren’t gone. I hope the haters are wrong, that there’s always a place for GlitterGuts in Chicago, and I can do this forever. We’re gonna do this as long as we can, and much love to all of our other.

–ES